Whoa

Welcome to Whoa, a reimplementation of World of Warcraft 3.3.5a (build 12340) in C++11.

Supported Platforms

Currently, macOS 10.14+ is supported, including recent versions of macOS on M1 processors. Support for Linux is in progress. Support for Windows is coming soon™.

Building

To build, ensure you have a recent version of CMake installed, and run the following from the whoa directory:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make install

Assuming all went well, you should see a dist/bin directory appear in the build directory. The bin directory will contain a whoa executable.

Running

Whoa doesn't currently support reading from MPQ archives. Instead, it assumes you are launching the Whoa executable from the root of a fully extracted MPQ archive set for World of Warcraft 3.3.5a (build 12340). You can obtain a valid set of MPQ archives to extract by installing World of Warcraft 3.3.5a from legally purchased original install media. Whoa does not provide any copy of game data.

Assuming all goes well, you should be greeted by the login screen, complete with its flying dragon animation loop.

Whoa is very much a work-in-progress: it does not fully connect to a login server, does not play back sound or music, and does not support customizing settings. These things will be supported over time.

FAQ

Why?

It's fascinating to explore the development practices used to build a modern major video game.

Why 3.3.5a?

The game and its libraries have become significantly more complex in the intervening 10+ years. By picking 3.3.5a, it's possible to imagine this implementation will eventually be complete.

Can I use this in my own development projects?

It's probably a bad idea. The game is closed source, and this project is in no way official.

Legal

This project is released into the public domain.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King ©2008 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. Wrath of the Lich King is a trademark, and World of Warcraft, Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.